Have you got Internet banking for your business?

[Kay]

We've been trying for ages to get one. They (Clydesdale Bank) seem to make it all so very difficult. We have to snail mail and telephone and jump through a lot of hoops. It's crazy. I've had a personal account with that branch for more than 30 years. The business account has been with them for more than 10 years. I don't know why they make things so difficult.

Anyway, I think we've reached the final hurdle now as I spoke to one of their support staff on the phone today. We went through the usual security questions, so that was OK. And then he said he'd snail me a letter to confirm it. Why a snail mail? I told him I need to do Internet banking so why can't we communicate by email? Yadda, yadda... all the essential business was done. Then he asked if there was anything else he could help me with so I told him I was hungry and fancied a curry. But he said he couldn't help with that, and asked again if there was anything else he could help me with so I asked him if he was good looking. At this point, he stopped using English and reverted to Doric (my native tongue). Obviously he realised he was dealing with a Teuchter. (For those who don't know, a Teuchter is the type of person who points at an aeroplane in the sky - the much-maligned country hick of Scotland.)

Anyway, Dave has just reported that after all this time and to-ing and fro-ing he has now been able to access our business account online. It seems to have taken an eternity to achieve.

Have you got an Internet account for your business? Care to say which bank? How easy or difficult was it?

[grynge]

When I first tried several years ago they just didn't want to know. The last one I got only a couple of months ago, was very simple, though I did walk into the branch (not over the phone like yourself) and about 30 minutes later I had everything internet banking, business visa debit card(I hate credit cards), and gateway information. That was the CommBank.

[akirk]

HSBC gave us internet banking 11-12 years ago - and it was good...
Lloyds TSB has been more recent - but it is improving all the time...

most banks will not use email for formal correspondence

Alasdair

[Kay]

We've had Internet banking for our personal account, with the same branch, for several years. They just always seemed to throw obstacles in our way when it came to the business account. This carry-on has been going on for several years.

As I'm sure you can imagine, Internet banking is extremely important when you have a fairly nomadic lifestyle. There have been times when we have to go for months without a clue about what's been happening on that account. If people say they've paid us then we just had to take it on trust that they did. AFAIK, we've not been cheated by anyone, but it's a hellish difficult way to run a business. What we had to do to get around it was leave that one only for cash coming in and use our personal accounts to pay anything that needed to go out.

However, I think we've just cracked it. Obviously I'm happy about that, but I'm still a bit peed off that it took so long to achieve.

The Clydesdale used to be a great bank when the branch manager had some autonomy to make decisions. Then they centralised it all and the standard of customer service dropped dramatically. In ye olden days you'd get a personal service but now you're just another faceless pleb on the other end of the call centre helpline.

I used to love the Clydesdale. One time, almost 20 years ago Dave and I were buying a house in London. The building society messed up a transfer and didn't send the money to the bank as it should have. Therefore, our cheque hit the bank for £10K that wasn't in there. The manager responded by honouring the cheque and writing to us apologising that he'd have to change us interest on our unauthorised overdraft. Relief! If he'd not honoured that cheque, we'd have lost the deal on the house and all the money we'd sunk into surveyor's fees, etc, etc. That would never happen now, and not even before all this credit crunch stuff. If a mix-up happens they'll not help you and will send you a nasty letter about it, and then charge you for the 'privilege' of them sending you that letter. Bah! I hate banks.

I would prefer to keep all my money under the mattress hidden in an old sock. (Don't tell anyone that's where it is.)

[Dave McM]

This business of setting up Internet banking with the Clydesdale is turning out to be real Keystone Kops stuff.

I managed to get in OK and have just tried to set up a payee on the system, only to find that for some reason best known to themselves they've set me up as a "view only" user instead of a full access one. That certainly wasn't our intention, and I don't think I filled in the form wrongly (although I must say it was a pretty confusingly formatted form).

No problem, their helpdesk told me, Kay has permissions for everything on the account and can arrange for me to have full access... except that she can't. Not over the Internet, anyway. When I tried to set up her login, we found that her one-time password (passed to us over the phone by someone at our registered company office) didn't work. And now it seems he's taken the paper to the post office to forward it to us. (He'd already left the office some time ago. I've tried phoning his mobile, but it went to voicemail, so I left a message and texted him for good measure. But it's probably too late. Aargh!)

[Dave McM]

So we tried phoning their "Help"desk. Got the usual "password is case-sensitive" mullarkey. Yes. We know. (In fairness, I've lost count of the number of times I've managed to solve people's login problems with that.)

So I went through the process, while Kay had to more or less insist that the wifey stayed on the line to see what happened when I entered the one-time password again. No good - the account is locked, so she'll have to send a new password, which should reach us in 3-5 business days.

Can they change things so that I'm the primary holder? (It seems ridiculous that either of us can sign cheques but only one of us can conduct business online, but if that's their rules... although their application form didn't suggest that that was the case.)
Yes, they can, but only at the branch and with forms filled in.

OK, how about telephone banking? Can we transfer funds that way? "Sorry, you're not registered for it." What? How the hell did that happen? We asked for it when we applied for the Internet banking.

This is getting increasingly silly.

[Kay]

This is just getting crazy. We have money in our account but they are making it so very difficult to get access to our own money. We have bills to pay and enough money to pay them. Dave can look at the account but not do any transactions and I can't even get into the account.

If anyone is considering getting Internet banking for their business, then my advice is don't go anywhere near the Clydesdale Bank unless you want to be driven insane.

I've been banging my head off a brick wall most of the day, please send donations for me to buy more bandages. You can use PayPal because it will be completely pointless to send any money into our business account. I probably won't get access to it until 2022. Grrr!

[Kay]

I have figured out a way to solve this Internet banking problem. I will write a cheque from the business account to myself. Just as well I didn't throw the cheque book away as being an unwanted piece of history. Who the heck uses cheques these days? Then I will snail mail it to our personal account. Crikey, how long will that take? And then the cheque will have to clear. And then we will be able to access our own money via Internet banking on our personal account.

It's not like I'm trying to do anything weird. The bank knows who we are. We have two accounts with that bank. There are two identical signatories for both accounts. I want them to take the money out of account A and put it in account B.

Clydesdale Bank Internet Banking - that gets my vote as the oxymoron of the month. On second thoughts, let's not waste words - Clydesdale Bank - moron of the month.

[cash ninja]

Wow, they sound like hard work. I use Santander for my business account and I don't remember the internet banking being particularly painful to set up. Yes, they insist on sending certain things out by post, like the security codes you need to login, etc but I've stored those in a safe place so I can get in.

They also insist on sending me another code by text message whenever I try to send a payment - this has been a pita when I've been abroad and not wanted to use my phone whilst away, then had to turn it on just to receive a single text but, by the same token it does make me more confident that even if someone got access to the account they wouldn't be able to transfer all the money out without my knowledge (I hope).

[Dave McM]

Kay's new one-time password arrived today, so we managed to get her access set up. So off we went to set up a standing order. However, after we'd entered all the details and received an on-screen acknowledgement I went to see our list of standing orders, only to be told that we didn't have any. We've been through the process again since then, but nothing doing. Maybe they'll both pop in over the weekend, in which case we'll delete one before the due date. If neither appears, I suppose we'll have to phone again and check what's happened.

Meanwhile, on our personal account, I tried to make an Internet payment only to be told I'd have to phone to verify it before the funds would be released.

Internet banking, eh? We seem to conduct more business by phoning or sending snail mail letters than we do when we're logged in. Sheesh.